


Making the Morning

by dornishsphinx



Category: Persona 2
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 14:42:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19889509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dornishsphinx/pseuds/dornishsphinx
Summary: He has a routine every morning; Michel needs time to become Michel, out of his public’s adoring gaze.Or not-so adoring gaze.





	Making the Morning

**Author's Note:**

> Written for @mivoril over on twitter for the Persona 2 Exchange!

Cowardice was unbefitting of a real man. He’d told his buddies that often enough that they could always see it coming and say it with him, like a lyric belted back by a crowd of adoring fans. Even so, when he woke that morning, looked blearily at the clock he’d forgotten to set the night before, and realised that there was no way he was going to make it to school on time, the thought that snapped him into full alert was that there was equally no way he was going to avoid being spotted sneaking out. 

He was pretty sure today was Momma’s turn to head down to the fish markets at Kounan and snatch up the freshest catches too, which meant the one left here to catch  _ him _ was ready and willing to spear him through.

He wasn’t the sort to give up without a fight, of course, but Kankichi Mishina was no mere mortal when it came to terrifying the living bejeezus out of his son. So, when Eikichi tiptoed tentatively down the stairs ten minutes later, bag slung across his boring unmodified uniform and a nervous look spread across his bare face, he stopped dead at the sound of a familiar raspy voice berating someone on the phone, a slam, and then the steady beat of a knife getting into the groove starting up from the kitchen.

Why, oh why, did today have to be Momma’s turn at going out to the fish market?

He was just considering whether creeping or bolting to the door was a better option when he heard a familiar shout rising above the knife’s rhythm.

“Eikichi!”

He made the last couple of steps down the stairs and uneasily poked his head into the back room, slowly, and with sweat beginning to pour down his back. When he did, he got a full dose of his father’s withering glare.

“…Hey there, Pops,” he said, following up with a nervous laugh.

Pops’ eyes narrowed. The effect was severe, especially with his fish knife in hand. Obviously, he was prepping for the lunch rush this afternoon, and Kankichi Mishina wasn’t the sort of man to let human blood contaminate his knives or the good name of Gatten Sushi, but even so, Eikichi couldn’t help but wonder how quickly he could dodge if it was flung it in his direction with all the expertise eighteen black belts had bestowed upon him.

“And what time,” said Pops, with another slam of the knife into the fish—time was money, as he always said, and the restaurant was more important than any conversation with his son—“Do you think this is?”

Eikichi got the feeling saying the actual time would result in getting yelled at more, so he just laughed nervously again.

Pops made an exasperated noise.

“Just because this is a family business doesn’t mean I’ll stand for you failing school! Don’t be such a waste of space and get out of here, now!”

Eikichi gladly followed the command, even as he couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like if he left off about him taking over for a single day of their lives. Before he did, though, Pops peered at the top of his head with a frown. 

A shiver went down his spine. He’d not screwed up and missed a spot yesterday, had he? He’d been forced to help out during the evening rush last night, every hour that passed surrounded by the smell of fish making him slowly forget what normal air—and being even slightly enthused about what he was doing—was like. Surely Pops would have gutted him then and there if he’d messed up.

“I-I’m gonna be late! I really need to get going!”

With all the freezers, there was a permanent chill in the back room, cooling the sweat dripping down his spine and forming an unpleasant, cold sensation in the small of his back. He tried thinking about it as practise for when he’d one day be sweating under spotlights, even if the glamour of the stage was far from a place like this, as cold and dead as the delicacies it served up.

After a long, agonising, nigh-torturous moment, Pops made a waving motion towards the door.

Eikichi bolted.

***

He was going to be way later than Pops thought, of course.

He’d tried out a dozen public bathrooms for his transformations over the last few years, but he’d eventually settled on this one. It had decent lighting and clean enough mirrors that he could actually see what he was doing, and it was relatively separate from any major pedestrian routes. Sure, there might sometimes be worker bees running in and out again without even sparing him a glance, or, on occasion, some judgemental old geezer who’d frown and glare as he made up his face and painted his hair, but usually it was pretty quiet. More importantly, there was next to no chance one of his classmates would end up bumping into him when he wasn’t yet properly made up. That was a definite plus.

So, it was a shock to say the least when another student in Kasugayama blues walked in, especially when class had begun twenty minutes before. The only reason he didn’t freak out and run for the hills was that he was already pretty much perfect: uniform modified, layers of make-up applied, and his hair livened up from dull, boring black to electric, vibrant blue. He was just checking the white stripe which tied everything together had dried properly when he spotted the familiar uniform passing across his mirror. He gaped, and when the guy turned his head and met his reflected gaze by accident, his eyes went wide. Aha, so he recognised the Death Boss! The pride that swelled in Eikichi’s chest pushed out any awkwardness or need to go cower in one of the stalls until Mister Unexpected was gone.

“We’re pretty late, huh?” he said, with a grin.

“I suppose we are,” said the boy, after a pause that lasted way too long. His voice was quiet, and his expression contained a whole range of emotions smashed together into a mess of which Eikichi could make neither head nor tail. 

The weirdest thing was, Eikichi didn’t recognise the guy. He knew pretty much everybody at Kasugayama by their face, but he couldn’t place this one. At the very least, he couldn’t place the simulacrum of it he could see via the mirror. As he was running through all the students he could be, it occurred to him:

“Hey, you’re not that transfer student, are you?”

People had been talking about him a lot a while back; he’d been a student at Sevens, originally, but then he’d been kicked out for beating up a group of other kids without receiving a single scratch in the process. They’d somehow never managed to meet up until now, even though Eikichi had been deathly curious to meet him. 

He still was, really. He gave the reflection the once-over: on further inspection, the guy was slender and fairly effeminate. Could he could really be all that strong under his outward appearance? Well, he supposed Pops gave off the false impression of being scrawny too, but he was a machine of destruction with his mastery of martial arts. And hey, there’d been a hell of a lot of guys who’d seen his guitar and style and presumed that, just because he preferred being a rockstar to a fighter, he and his badass shinigami couldn’t kick their punk asses from here to Mount Katatsumuri if they started beating up on younger kids.

The boy stayed quiet for a short while, his forehead creasing, before he said: “Yes.”

“Huh. Well, don’t get any ideas about going after weaklings, got it? Or I’ll come after you!”

He turned back to the mirror, running more gel through his hair with care. 

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

The hard edge that crept into the boy’s tone was impossible to miss, especially to Michel’s infallible musical ear. His hand, which had been ruffling through the spikes to layer in some carefully-crafted wildness, paused. Then, as the transfer student came forward to wash his hands in the sink, he peered over to give his actual face a closer look. Without the mirror getting in the way, it was obvious the guy’s eyes were distant and unfocused, with marked shadows under them. It was like he’d not slept in days. 

He felt bad now, giving him the shovel talk on behalf of Kasugayama’s entire student body without checking to see if he was in a state to receive it. He was the Death Boss, sure, but it wasn’t as though he was satisfied with other students being terrified into decency! He wanted them to be happy and healthy, not wandering around driving themselves downhill. And it definitely seemed like the guy might be going through some things.

“…You okay there, dude?”

“Of course,” said the boy, meeting his eyes. Now they were actually looking at each other in a physical space, it was like his gaze was piercing through Eikichi’s head. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Uh, just…” 

Eikichi tried starting over again.

“Though you likely know already, lemme introduce my _ self _ : I’m Kasugayama’s number one super-cool, handsome guy, Mich _ el _ ! Ow!” He clasped his hands around himself, the better to get his image across to the new guy. “Soon to be most famous rockstar outta Sumaru as front man of Gas Chamber. And more to the point, I’m what’s called the Death Boss around here—” He grinned with a confidence he’d practised in the mirror over and over again—“But that’ll not matter unless you try stirring up trouble.”

“I’ll be sure not to,” said the boy. His tone, and face, were flat.

He’d been hoping to get a name out of him in return, but it looked like he wasn’t going to be so lucky. Eikichi sighed dramatically, shrugged, and turned back to the mirror and to the task of finishing up his dye and make-up. The boy, a reflection once again, looked down at his tools of the trade with a frown.

“Gotta problem with my look?” he asked, with just the thinnest hint of a warning.

“No, I just… wasn’t expecting that to be something you can do in a morning. It looks complicated.”

Michel’s suspicions immediately vanished, and he preened. “Ah, because it’s just too perfect?” 

The boy remained silent. 

“I have my look down,” he said. “It’s  _ al _ ways ready to go.”

“You never change it up at all? Even though you do it every day?”

Eikichi waved a hand. “You wouldn’t spray perfume on a flower, would you?”

It was a canned line he threw out often. It normally resulted in giggles or groans. What he didn’t expect was a response.

“There are flowers without a scent,” the boy mused. “And there are flowers that make you gag if you step within ten feet. They say the worst smells like rotting meat. So, maybe for such a flower to reach the perfect ideal, you might have to spray perfume on it.”

Then he tittered, bringing a hand to his mouth. “Ah, what am I saying. Spraying perfume on it would be useless. It couldn’t hide such a stench, no matter how much you layered on. And even if it did, it would still be there underneath, waiting for the illusion to fade.”

Eikichi sent a concerned glance to the reflection of the guy talking nonsense beside him and, for just a moment, he almost thought he saw a manic expression on his face. When he looked again, though, it was gone.

“The truth will win, anyway,” the boy said. There was a vicious edge to it, that made Eikichi wonder if he really had been seeing things after all. “No matter how much you try to hide it away.”

“You calling my rockstar good looks an illusion, buddy?” said Eikichi, after a few seconds of trying to parse whatever the hell he meant.

The boy’s eyes widened as he seemed to finally anchor himself back in reality. “That’s not—that’s not what I meant. Just…” He looked away and gritted his teeth. “Never mind.”

So this guy was a weirdo, huh. Still, and he wasn’t exactly sure why, but Eikichi had the feeling he wasn’t a bad guy under it all. Maybe he was just out of sorts, and this was his way of awkwardly trying to be friendly. He was still relatively new here, after all, and the kind of jerks that attended Sevens were the fair-weather sort, who’d likely turned on him the moment he’d started somewhere like ‘Cuss High’.

The notion that he was lonely tugged at Eikichi’s heartstrings.  He clapped him on the arm; the transfer student looked down at it like a scorpion had crawled onto his arm. He didn’t take it personally: they’d never met in person before, and presumably the guy only knew his kickass reputation of kicking ass. He probably figured Eikichi was getting ready to beat up on him.

“Hey,” he said, “Me and my buds are gonna be hanging out at Sumaru Prison after school today. Wanna come join? You’ll get to hear my  _ dul _ cet tones that make all the ladies swoon, and way before our big break too.”

The boy looked away from the hand and down into the sink, where the water was still swirling into the drain.

“Why are you inviting me?”

What was with this guy? Seriously.

“Uh. To be friendly, I guess?” He ruffled his hair again. The gel was fully set, finally! He turned around to send a grin over at the new kid. “So, whaddya say—”

He blinked in surprise to see the empty space beside him.

Well, whatever. Even if he’d been rude about it, it was true they were super late. Maybe he just wanted to get going and had no social graces. That would explain half their conversation anyway. He’d just chase him up on the offer to hang out when they next bumped into each other at school.

He applied the final layer of black to his lips, slammed on a puff of setting powder, and regarded himself critically — then with a thrill — in the mirror. Baby, Michel was  _ here _ ! He made a few poses and, satisfied that he was finally presentable, he finally made his way back into the thin morning sunlight beating down on Hirasaka’s streets.

Maybe he’d make it in time for the second period.


End file.
